Where to Eat in Montreal in the Depths of Winter

From foie gras chicken nuggets to a transportive Haitian soup, Montreal is about more than just poutine.

On a dark and windy night last December, in the middle of a brutally cold snowstorm in Montreal, where everybody was speaking French and acting like it was no big deal, I ate one of the greatest bowls of soup I have had in years.

The view from almost seat at Foxy: Its glowing fiery oven.

Photo by Dominique LaFond

I know what you’re thinking: He’s in Canada, the land of ice fishing and beaver-tail soup with foie gras dumplings and smoked-meat maple syrup quenelles served in wooden bowls in smoky tanneries, and I did eat things like that, but no, this soup was made with squash and lime and cilantro and it was at a vibrant and boisterous Haitian restaurant, and it was magical.

Winter fun in a winter town.

Photo by Dominique LaFond

There are some fundamental reasons why I have absolutely no business writing about eating in Montreal in winter, not least of which is that Montreal is cold, and I hate being cold. I also kind of hate eating food. Let me explain: I am obsessed with food. But I’ve spent the past 15 years in professional kitchens, tasting little bits of everything, and the idea of sitting and eating a three-course meal makes my stomach want to shoot itself in its stomach-face. Also, this trip was scheduled for the week my wife was due to give birth to our first child, and I knew that if I were to miss that so I could eat myself silly in Canada, my wife may rightfully have never forgiven me. And also, really, I’m a chef, not a food writer.

Joe Beef chef de cuisine Marc-Olivier Frappier takes a breather.

Photo by Dominique LaFond

At any rate, I went to Montreal and it was very cold, and I ate way too much, and it turns out that it makes sense to be there in winter. Montreal is really its truest self in winter. The city is all strung up with Christmas lights, and people go skiing and sledding in Mount Royal Park. And it seems that the locals are just waiting for the tourists to go back south before they fill the city’s many restaurants. Have you seen the Quebec episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown? I can tell you with absolute certainty that my trip was nothing like that winterfest. I did not go ice fishing and eat truffles with the Joe Beef guys. I did not go beaver trapping and eat truffles with the Au Pied de Cochon dude. And I did not ride on trains and eat hot maple syrup poured on snow, covered in truffles. Not to be completely outdone by Mr. Bourdain, I did have gut-busting, drunken meals at both of those establishments. But outside of the restaurants celebrating the splendor and excess of Québécois tradition, there’s a whole city of other places casually putting forth their own ideas of what Montreal food can be, from hip Haitian to Jewish delis old and new, and they’re doing it all with a French accent and a kiss on each cheek. I dragged along food personality and actual writer Francis Lam so that he could help me eat, but the next time I go, I’ll do it with family.

Where I’ll Take My Parents

Lunch is my favorite time to eat a big meal, and Montreal seems to agree. And sometimes breakfast is lunch when you’ve eaten at Joe Beef the night before—which is when you go to Wilensky’s Light Lunch for a Wilensky Special. The special is bologna and salami on a cornmeal roll with mustard, and it has remained unchanged since 1932. I sat at the counter and washed it down with some grape soda while chatting with Sharon Wilensky, daughter of the founding patriarch, who was not the strict arbiter of the Law of Wilensky I had heard about (thou shalt not ask for a sandwich without mustard) but was in fact delightful and suggested some wintry things to do in Montreal, like zip-lining and a big dance party down by the docks—which, for a person who hates being cold and suffers from social anxiety, sounded terrifying.

A smoked-meat sandwich at Schwartz's, Canada's oldest deli.

Photo by Dominique LaFond

Wilensky’s was the first stop on the Jewish tourist food thing in Mile End, which I wanted to do because (1) I was a Jewish tourist, and (2) my father and his parents emigrated to Montreal in the late ’30s, refugees from what was once Hungary and is now Romania, and I wanted to see where my father learned to speak French and love ice hockey, as well as to eat the same smoked meat that he had as a child. And there is the same smoked meat. Like at Schwartz’s, apparently the oldest deli in Canada! It turns out that a smoked-meat sandwich is not a pastrami sandwich; the smoke is a little less intense and the spices are like pastrami spices, but they pop individually—one bite is black pepper, the next, coriander. And maybe I like the whole thing better than New York’s Katz’s (he typed as gently as possible with his eyes closed and mouth pinched into an uncomfortable smile as he if were about to be punched in the face).

Fletchers Espace Culinaire is inside of the Museum of Jewish Montreal.

Photo by Dominique LaFond

I also found a crop of restaurants drawing from tradition but doing something entirely new, like Fletchers Espace Culinaire, the small café inside the tiny but charming Museum of Jewish Montreal. Fletchers is run by Kat Romanow, a Jewish-food historian who gives tours in good weather; come winter she can be found at the café preparing awesome food, like gravlax cured with ras-el-hanout and served with a sesame bagel from famed and ancient Montreal bagel shop St. Viateur, preserved-lemon cream cheese, and pickled red onions. If you are really nice, maybe you can get her to tell you all about the neighborhood, a treat because she will direct you to the old Jewish delicacies that aren’t in the guidebooks, like the cheese crowns, little cheesecake hand pies covered in powdered sugar, at the Cheskie bakery.

The panettone, a sweet bread, from Hof Kelsten Bakery.

Photo by Dominique LaFond

At Hof Kelsten bakery, right up the street from Fletchers, owner Jeffrey Finkelstein is less concerned with Jewish history than absolute perfection. And the seeded rye bread is that. The brisket sandwich comes on two untoasted slices filled with corned beef (his mother’s recipe), sliced apples, pickled cabbage, and a Russian dressing made with pickles that Finkelstein brines himself. The second time I had the sandwich (and I’m sorry, editors, I know I was supposed to eat as many different things as possible, but I literally could not stop thinking about this sandwich), I was just going to have a couple of bites to remind myself of the beautiful interplay of the salty beef with the bright apples and that slightly funky smell from the cabbage so that I could properly plagiarize it for No. 7 Sub, my sandwich restaurant in Brooklyn, and again, I ate the whole damn thing.

Nora Gray's linguine with clams is made only better with nduja.

Photo by Dominique LaFond

Where I’ll Take My Wife

I had no idea that Montreal was so well known for its strip clubs, but every cab driver seemed to see in Francis and me a couple of guys who look like they’re really into strip clubs. They would ask repeatedly if we wanted to go to one. Instead, we mostly walked around. Even though it was cold, there were always lots of other people out and about enjoying the holiday decorations. (Montreal goes hard both for restaurants and Santa displays.) It was so romantic that my running joke was to stop and grab Francis’ arm and say, “Actually, there’s something I wanted to ask you...,” after which we would burst out laughing, but secretly I think that the city was getting to us. Walking out of the cold into a restaurant in Montreal is like getting into a hot tub with a Brandy Alexander in hand next to a stereo playing Van Halen on a clear winter night. (I’m not saying I’ve ever done that, but doesn’t it sound amazing?!) Anyway, that’s what it felt like to walk into Nora Gray, which looks like a Midwestern grandparents’ den in a low-ceilinged, wood-walled, leather-upholstered way, and feels like where the popular kids eat. Because I look like a bearded version of the great Canadian actor Rick Moranis, I stuck out a little. It was worth it because linguine with clams and nduja was easily one of the best things I ate in Montreal.

Plating food in the Damas kitchen.

Photo by Dominique LaFond

Next I need to tell you about Foxy. Foxy doesn’t use any gas cooking equipment, blah, blah, blah. But instead of just being wood-fired everything, it also lists charcoal on its menu, and a restaurant with a charcoal grill makes me feel super good about everything. It has a pretty awesome aesthetic as well because just about anywhere you sit in the dark restaurant, you can see the coals glowing red, and it feels like Satan is roasting the souls of Canadians who covet thy neighbor’s goose liver while the chef grills the night’s sea bass and serves it with cucumbers and aioli. I honestly couldn’t pick a favorite dish: the brussels sprout coleslaw full of sweet apples and shreds of duck, or what sounded like a simple bowl of polenta that came out topped with braised mushrooms and bright orange shavings of Gouda. But who am I kidding? It was the clams! Baked in a smoky tomato sauce with almond breadcrumbs and a lot of cilantro, they tasted like Spain but with a creamy, nutty Canadian thoughtfulness.

The ginger rose fizz at Damas looks like a work of art.

Photo by Dominique LaFond

Damas is fancy. Not jacket-required fancy, but there are beautiful hanging light fixtures and the kitchen is done up in black-and-white tiles, and the modern Syrian food totally blew my tiny mind open. Plus, our server drank the most delicious lemon-infused fancy cardamom boozy shots with us, which is not a thing that usually happens at fancy restaurants, but I was again reminded of how Montreal goes hard.

Hummus lahme with spiced lamb and pine nuts is one of many stars at Damas.

Photo by Dominique LaFond

The hummus lahme, a swoosh of the lightest, silkiest hummus topped with delicately spiced chunks of lamb sautéed in ghee with pine nuts, was as good as it looks in the photo in this story. And for the record, I ate at Damas directly after the foiepocalypse at Au Pied de Cochon, and while I was planning on just having a bite here and a bite there, I ended up eating a full-on second dinner and felt surprisingly great afterward. Maybe it was the shots!

In the kitchen at Larrys.

Photo by Dominique LaFond

I felt less great the next morning, but that is no excuse to skip brunch. I usually find that the only brunch worth eating anywhere is the Jewish variety involving bagels and salmon, and Montreal has plenty of that, so if you skipped the first section of this story, go back. Despite all of this, my friend Mark Slutsky (another food writer who actually lives there) talked me into meeting for brunch at Larrys in Mile End. If Larrys were in Brooklyn or Silver Lake, it would be impossible to get a table. The roasted potatoes with mayonnaise for dipping, as well as the blood sausage stewed with chickpeas and topped with a poached egg, made me feel like I could get into brunch after all. As we were leaving, a line was forming and my companion seemed to know everybody and I really got a glimpse of what it’s like to be a hungover celebrity in one of the coolest neighborhoods in Montreal.

The First Place I’ll Take My Newborn

On my last night in Montreal a friend and I were on a long walk in the Old Port, a neighborhood that looks like Europe and caused me to say for maybe the hundredth time, “Montreal feels so foreign”—because, you know, Quebec is so close, but they speak another language and it is literally another country—when it started snowing. Or since it is apparently always snowing to some degree in Montreal, it started snowing harder. We weren’t wearing appropriate shoes, so we quickly trudged the few blocks to the last restaurant of the trip. When we walked into the small house that is Agrikol, it was warm, the music was loud, and the place was packed. One of the specials was “A Celebratory Haitian Soup for Two,” and even though a giant bowl of soup was figuratively the last thing I wanted to see, of course my friend insisted we try it. (See what I did there? We’re back at the soup!) Out came a giant steaming bowl of soup joumou, a purée of squash cooked in beef stock with chunks of potatoes and parsnips, small meat-filled dumplings that look like ravioli, and a giant marrow bone sticking out like a lighthouse in a blizzard of coriander seeds and cilantro leaves. It was served with two of my favorite things in the known universe: a lime for squeezing and grilled crusty bread for dipping in the broth. We ate it in silence in the warmth of that restaurant while it snowed and snowed outside.

Strong sides game at Larrys with anchovies, carrots, and broccoli.

Photo by Dominique LaFond

And I could go on about how a Haitian restaurant makes so much sense in Montreal because they speak French and eat soup too, or about the fundamental idea that Montreal is a postcolonial soup of cultures trying to coexist while navigating the French language, so why not cheese crowns and hummus too? But I don’t think I need to do that. Someday, if I am ever hungry again, I will go back and take my wife and our ridiculously tiny new daughter (yes, I made it back in time for her birth, and we named her Montreal Tourtière Kord, though we’ve just been calling her Monty McPoutine, and I want you to know that I am kidding and her name is Barbara Grace Kord and we call her Screamy McPooperson, so you can just relax). And maybe we will go next spring when the weather is nice, but probably not because Montreal feels so right right now.